Our health-care system suffers from problems of cost, access and quality, and needs major reform. Tax policy drives employment-based insurance; this begets overinsurance and drives costs upward while creating inequities for the unemployed and self-employed. A regulatory morass limits innovation. And deep flaws in Medicare and Medicaid drive spending without optimizing care.

Speeches and news reports can lead you to believe that proposed congressional legislation would tackle the problems of cost, access and quality. But that’s not true. The various bills do deal with access by expanding Medicaid and mandating subsidized insurance at substantial cost—and thus addresses an important social goal. However, there are no provisions to substantively control the growth of costs or raise the quality of care. So the overall effort will fail to qualify as reform.

In discussions with dozens of health-care leaders and economists, I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health-care spending rather than restrain it. Likewise, nearly all agree that the legislation would do little or nothing to improve quality or change health-care’s dysfunctional delivery system.

~~~

Ultimately, our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies would suffer most of all.

Meanwhile, another Harvard alumni weighs in:

Joseph Stubbs, President of the American College of Physicians — the second largest doctors’ group in the country — confirms that “the supply of doctors just won’t be there” for the 30 million new patients Barack Obama wants to cover. Noting that the doctor shortage is “already a catastrophic crisis,” Stubbs said that underserved areas in the U.S. currently need almost 17,000 new primary care physicians even before Obama’s proposals are enacted.

In the meantime, according to Bloomberg News, a 2009 survey by Merritt Hawkins and Associates, a recruiting and research firm in Irving, Texas, found that “the average waiting time to see a family-medicine doctor in Boston … is 63 days, the most among the 15 cities” surveyed. By comparison, in Miami, it was only seven days.

The study noted that Boston’s longer wait was “driven in part by the health-care reform initiative” passed in 2006 in Massachusetts upon which the Obama program is modeled. Bloomberg reported that “as many as half of doctors in the state have closed their practices to new patients, forcing many of the newly insured to turn to emergency rooms for care.”

Alan Goroll, a professor at Harvard Medical School said that “the primary lesson of health-care reform in Massachusetts is that you can’t increase the number of insured unless you have a strong primary-care base in place to receive them. Without that foundation … Massachusetts has ended up with higher costs and people going to emergency rooms when they can’t find a doctor.”

And, a study by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, part of the federal government’s Health and Human Services Department, found that expanding insurance coverage to an estimated 32 million people who now lack it would create a demand for medical services that “could be difficult to meet initially … and could lead to price-increases, cost-shifting, and-or changes in providers’ willingness to treat patients with low-reimbursement health coverage.”

Indeed, the report found that the Medicare cuts contained in the House-passed bill are likely to “prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether.”

Two-thirds of Americans disagree with the Obama administration’s decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a civilian court rather than a military court, according to a new national poll.

But six in 10 people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday say that the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks should be tried in the United States, as the administration plans to do, rather than at a U.S. facility in another country.

The poll indicates that 64 percent believe Mohammed should be tried in military court, with 34 percent suggesting that he face trial in civilian court. Six in 10 people questioned say Mohammed should be tried stateside, with 37 percent calling for the trial to take place at a U.S. facility in another country.

“The decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in front of a civilian court is universally unpopular – even a majority of Democrats and liberals say that he should be tried by military authorities,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Despite that, most Americans say that he will get a fair trial in the U.S.”

Not sure what Holland’s point is here. Of course he would get a fair trial, but the majority of respondents, in a CNN poll for gods sake, understand that giving this scumbag a civilian trial is ludicrous:

Trying KSM in civilian court will be an intelligence bonanza for al Qaeda and the hostile nations that will view the U.S. intelligence methods and sources that such a trial will reveal. The proceedings will tie up judges for years on issues best left to the president and Congress.

Whether a jury ultimately convicts KSM and his fellows, or sentences them to death, is beside the point. The treatment of the 9/11 attacks as a criminal matter rather than as an act of war will cripple American efforts to fight terrorism. It is in effect a declaration that this nation is no longer at war.

~~~

Prosecutors will be forced to reveal U.S. intelligence on KSM, the methods and sources for acquiring its information, and his relationships to fellow al Qaeda operatives. The information will enable al Qaeda to drop plans and personnel whose cover is blown. It will enable it to detect our means of intelligence-gathering, and to push forward into areas we know nothing about.

This is not hypothetical, as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has explained. During the 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (aka the “blind Sheikh”), standard criminal trial rules required the government to turn over to the defendants a list of 200 possible co-conspirators.

In essence, this list was a sketch of American intelligence on al Qaeda. According to Mr. McCarthy, who tried the case, it was delivered to bin Laden in Sudan on a silver platter within days of its production as a court exhibit.

Bin Laden, who was on the list, could immediately see who was compromised. He also could start figuring out how American intelligence had learned its information and anticipate what our future moves were likely to be.

It’s crazy. Simply crazy.

Even more harmful to our national security will be the effect a civilian trial of KSM will have on the future conduct of intelligence officers and military personnel. Will they have to read al Qaeda terrorists their Miranda rights? Will they have to secure the “crime scene” under battlefield conditions? Will they have to take statements from nearby “witnesses”? Will they have to gather evidence and secure its chain of custody for transport all the way back to New York? All of this while intelligence officers and soldiers operate in a war zone, trying to stay alive, and working to complete their mission and get out without casualties.

And the other poll is about ObamaCare. Notice how the AP tries to hide some inconvenient numbers with a article entitled “AP POLL: Tax the rich to pay for health bill”

…what the Associated Press does not even mention in their story is probably the most relevant part:

In general, do you support, oppose or neither support nor oppose the health care reform plans being discussed in Congress? (IF SUPPORT/OPPOSE Is that strongly support/oppose or somewhat support/oppose?

To no surprise that’s opposed by 43-41%. Eleven percent neither support or oppose and 4% “don’t know.”

Also conveniently left out of their story is the response to whether people should be penalized if they do not buy the government-run health care: Sixty-four percent oppose. Why do you suppose that was left out?

Also left out was of the respondents, 37% are unemployed or retired. No wonder they want someone to pick up the tab.

Forty-two percent think they economy will get worse if this scam is shoved down our throats, while 28% think it will improve. Again, this is left out of the story.

Also, over the past five years, 86% of respondents said the care they received from physician or hospital was excellent or good, only 2% said it was poor. This was left out of the AP story. So why do we have to blow up the entire system?

That’s a couple different polls on the two hot button issues of the day which Obama and company should take heed….but won’t. Now granted, the opinions of a thousand people cannot tell us accurately the sentiments of the entire country but when two liberal rags take a poll and the numbers go against the liberal position….the liberals should take notice.

I saw irrational fear years ago with a friend, his name was Johnny or Barb Wire Johnny. He was one of the best horsemen, I’ve ever known. Johnny lived in the bush country of Northern British Columbia, he was an outfitter, trapper, and horse trainer. A small man with long black flowing hair that the most beautiful women in the world can only dream about.

With a gentle heart and calm steady hands he could make the best ranch horses, mountain horses, pack horses, and driving horses I have ever seen. For all his abilities, Johnny had his personal demons; like many in the North he was part native and possessed a weakness for alcohol, a common affliction in the North. He also had a taste for high venison, most of us ate moose and moose hardly ever spoils, but Johnny liked to hang his venison until it started to spoil. It caused him to have a permanent case of dysentery and Johnny never quite made the connection. Like many of the old timers, Johnny wore moose hide moccasins and leggins, in the winter he also wore a union suit beneath his moose hide clothes. That’s a pair of woolen long johns with a flap in the back for life’s necessaries.

Unfortunately, Johnny might be overtaken by his dietary problems at any moment, so he liked to stuff straw or hay in the back door of his union suit, just in case. Moose hide stretches and Johnny was always stretching his leather leggins from riding horses and stuffing the hind end with straw. It was funny to watch a little man with an oversized and sagging butt walking away, but I never said anything.

I was Johnny’s connection to the outside world, I would bring the whiskey, horses for training, and cash paying hunters. I lived on a ranch with a phone, a real advantage for a business man. There was usually at least a dozen people listening to every conversation, but it was a phone none the less. I helped him with the hooves, shoes, and teeth and he taught me of the mystical world of man and horse or the science of turning two critters into one, many of these lessons I use in my business to this day.

Johnny struggled for a long time trying to make spurs out of barb wire that would work with moccasins, no matter what he did he couldn’t get them to stay in place. I finally made a pair of spurs in the forge that would work for tiny moccasin’ed feet, he was so grateful it was touching. Little did he know, I would use his knowledge and techniques to build a business that would take me all over the world.

On a cold October day, I was bringing in a couple of hunters from the States along with several green colts for Johnny to train, when darkness overtook us. Traveling in the dark is risky business, it’s easy to lose an eye or run a snag through yourself or your horse, so we made camp about twelve miles from Johnny’s cabin. The temperature dropped to 30 below, and the hunters suffered from the cold; but I didn’t want the hunters to ride in the dark, there are just too many accidents waiting to happen.

We rode into the yard in the grey light of a snowy morning and heard screaming like someone was torturing Johnny in the cabin. I drew my rifle from the scabbard and jumped off my horse and hit the ground on the run. The cabin door was latched from the inside, I kicked it open while listening to Johnny screaming in agony. I stepped into Johnny’s cabin expecting to put rounds through one or more bad guys.

Johnny saw me and yelled, “shoot him Skook! Shoot him!”

I surveyed the scene in front of me, propped my rifle against the cabin wall, drew my knife and walked towards Johnny‘s bunk.

During the night the fire had gone out and Johnny’s moisture laden breath froze his beautiful black locks to the iron bedstead. While trapped by his own hair, Johnny let his imagination run away with him, he dreamed or envisioned the devil holding him down by the hair; consequently, he promised to give up drinking when he saw his departed mother praying for him over the tongue of the wagon.

I drew my knife through Johnny’s hair next to the iron rail, he jumped up and ran outside to collapse on the ice and snow in front of the two hunters who probably thought they had entered into an asylum.

I walked outside, knelt down and consoled Johnny, who was in his sweat soaked union suit and barefoot. “Skook, Skook you are the bravest man in the world. You threw down your rifle and took on the devil with your knife. There has never been a braver man than you.”

I smiled, all I had to do is let Johnny carry on with his delusion and I would be a legend in the Omineca Peace Region for hundreds of years. “No Johnny, the devil wasn’t in the cabin. Your hair was frozen to the iron rail on your bed.”

Johnny looked at me as if I were crazy. “I, I saw my mother on the tongue of the wagon praying for me.”

I shook my head, “No Johnny, it’s impossible to see your mother on the tongue of the wagon from your bed, that was your imagination.”

Johnny was slowly regaining his grasp of reality. “I swore if I could get loose from the devil, I would give up whiskey, but the devil didn’t really have me.”

“No Johnny, the devil wasn’t there,” I told him.

“Then I don’t have to give up drinking!”

I could see an advantage disappearing, I tried another direction, “it depends on how you look at it Johnny.”

Suddenly with an inner calm, Johnny asked, “did you bring the whiskey?”

I couldn’t lie, “yes, I have whiskey.”

“Good, I need a drink, you talk to those hunters while I get ready and then we will take them out for a hunt.”

Johnny’s hysteria is not much different from the hysteria over H1N1 or the Global Warming Hoax; Johnny was duped by his own imagination and was on the verge of believing anything during his delusion, especially if I had taken sadistic pleasure in perpetuating the delusion.

Americans are proving to be a gullible people, following the pied piper-like images of Al Gore and Obama. Their delusion and vivid imagination is being used to ensnare them into the belief that the government will save them from destruction and death, if only they will trust the good intentions of the Socialist State. Thus our lemming like public is being duped by the Obama administration.

A basic difference between me and the Obama administration is that I didn’t want to use a delusion to advance my own agenda.

Unemployment is now higher in the U.S. than in Europe,  reports the Washington Post.  “The official U.S. unemployment rate, reported last Friday, now stands at 10.2 percent,” compared to “9.7 percent” in Europe.   This is the highest rate in more than 26 years, and marks a huge change from the recent past, in which unemployment was double the American rate in much of Europe.

Unemployment is at 10 percent in France, which refused to adopt a U.S.-style stimulus package, and only 7.6 percent in Germany, which adopted a stimulus package that was smaller relative to its economy than ours was.  (Countries that refused to adopt big stimulus packages have fared better than those that imitated President Obama. And the biggest-spending countries have suffered worst in the recession.)

A “broader measure of U.S. unemployment,” including discouraged workers, puts U.S. unemployment at 17.5 percent, reports the New York Times.

As the Post notes, “For many on the left, the lament for years has been: Why can’t America be more like Europe? Why can’t rustic Americans be more like sophisticated Europeans? The sentiment has resurfaced in recent months as the health-care debate has raged on — why can’t the American health-care system be more like Europe’s?”

Well, America is now more like Europe when it comes to unemployment.  But not when it comes to social benefits and protections.  The American Left knows how to import Europe’s failures, but not its successes.

And the left is just pining for some more failure:

The massive health-care bill passed by the House on Saturday is a classic example.  It would expand health care coverage somewhat, but not to European levels, and it would vastly increase the costs of our health care system, rather than reducing it to European levels.   It would also increase taxes to “European levels of taxation.”  The health care bill contains politically-correct provisions that Europeans would never put up with, like pork for trial lawyers and racial preferences.  And restrictions on national competition in health insurance, which do not exist in Europe.

In France, doctors don’t need to be paid as much, because competing professions, like lawyers, are paid less.  French law is much more conservative than American law when it comes to lawsuits, including lawsuits against doctors.  There are NO punitive damages, and France discourages lawsuits by making unsuccessful plaintiffs pay the other side’s legal bills.  (Other European countries have specialized health courts, rather than American-style jury trials, to cut lawyers’ bills, speedily compensate the injured, and prevent American-style baseless lawsuits against doctors.)

Come on lefties…..cheer away!

Obama’s Election:

Little Jack Horner
Sat in the corner
Eating a Christmas Pie;
He put in his thumb,
And pulled out a plum,
And said, What a good boy am I

Little Barack Obama
Cursed by his mama’s drama
Given the Affirmative Action pie
He admired himself and learned to lie
He won the election plum
I can win, no matter how dumb

A Wartime President’s Confusion:

I’m the king of the castle,
Get down you dirty rascal.
I don’t care if there is a war
I’m so busy, and generals are a boor
I’ve won a Nobel Peace Prize
What’s war to me, but excuses and lies

Yankee Doodle

Yankee Doodle came to town
Riding on a pony
He stuck a father in his cap
And called it macaroni

Before the American Revolution, the British troops ridiculed the American colonials for their country ways and dress. The Americans had a habit of wearing a feather in their hats and their hair was often unruly. The British troops were required to keep their hair tied at the back in a small pony tail, this pony tail was referred to as macaroni and thus the British regular considered it far superior to an American’s typical hairstyle. Thus the song was written by British troops to embarrass the colonials with their rustic hairstyle and appearance.

At the Cornwallis surrender, the American band played Yankee Doodle while the British soldiers surrendered their rifles, in an effort to add insult to injury.

Barack Obama came to DC town
Riding a train like a foolish clown
Pretending he was Lincoln
Right then, I stopped believe’n

Ring Around The Rosie

Ring-a-round the rosies
A pocketful of posies
Ashes, Ashes
We all fall down

This was a game devised by children to make light of people dieing of the Black Plague, in the early 17th century, during the time while Shakespeare was putting on his plays in the Globe Theater. People who contracted the disease would fall ill suddenly, the first indication was an appearance of red rings with pustules in the center, the person would then become dizzy and walk in a circle and fall over dead. To combat the disease, people carried posies and ashes, if these failed, death at least came very quickly. The streets of London were littered with so many dead that special wagons were hired to haul away the bodies. Children will be children and the game is still played today, but without the ghoulish knowledge of the past.

Ring Around Rosie

Obama leads us on a fool’s game
Trust in me, George, he was so lame
I’ve got him to lay all the blame
With lemmings and fools I play, tis all the same

It’s ring around the Marxist
And you be racist if you resist
now we hold hands and sing Obama’s creed
And if you want to be rich or have a need
You can now be a Socialist indeed

Ring around the rosie
Ashes, ashes and we all fall down

Queen of Hearts:

The Queen of Hearts
She made some tarts
All on a summer’s day;
The knave of Hearts
He stole the tarts,
And took them clean away.

Queen of Hearts, Revised:

Our Queen of Hearts
Came to DC to get a head start
Her husband so wily and dull
Can rewrite history in minute detail
Especially if Bill Ayers ain’t in jail
Stand aside, let a woman throw the bull

Meanwhile Senator Gregg reacts to the new CBO estimate:

Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee today commented on the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) more detailed cost estimate of the manager’s amendment to the House health reform bill.

Senator Gregg stated, “The CBO estimate released last night finally sheds light on the smoke and mirrors game the majority has been playing with the cost of their health care reform proposal. Over the first 10 years, this legislation builds in gross new spending of $1.7 trillion – and most of the new spending doesn’t even start until 2014. Once that spending is fully phased in, the House Democratic bill rings up at more than $3 trillion over ten years.

“Additionally, this bill cuts critical Medicare and Medicaid funding by $628 billion, accounts for nearly $1.2 trillion in tax and fee increases and will explode the scope of government by putting the nation’s health care system in the hands of Washington bureaucrats. The $3 trillion price tag defies common sense – we simply cannot add all this new spending to the government rolls and claim to control the deficit.

“If we continue to pile more and more debt on the next generation, they will never be able to get out from under it. The health care system needs reform, but this massive expansion of government, financed by our children and grandchildren, is the wrong way to proceed.”

And listen…this is what our government believes will be the cost. But look at programs our government has run historically and you find decades of added costs and overruns that our forced onto the taxpayer.

Insanity

This from a CNN poll of all places:

Of course CNN spins away with this headline:

CNN Poll: Public wants Congress to keep working on health care

Puhlease….

…only a quarter say those bills should be passed pretty much as is, with a third suggesting that Congress should make major changes. The poll also indicates that one in four say lawmakers should start from scratch and 15 percent want Congress to stop all work on health care reform.

The survey’s release Friday morning comes one day before the full House of Representatives is expected to hold a floor vote on the Democrats health care reform bill.

“Most of the Democrats interviewed support some form of heath care reform, but the divisions within congressional Democrats are reflected in the party nationwide,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Forty percent of the Democratic rank and file want Congress to approve the proposals that have passed through committee with only minor changes. But an equal number of Democrats nationwide want Congress to make major changes to those proposals before approving them.”

~~~

“Six in ten independents say they oppose Obama’s health care proposals,” says Holland. “That’s a nine point increase since October.”

The Obama shine is fading fast and it won’t save his vision of a socialist utopia. What a difference a year makes eh? Charles Krauthammer:

Sure, Election Day 2009 will scare moderate Democrats and make passage of Obamacare more difficult. Sure, it makes it easier for resurgent Republicans to raise money and recruit candidates for 2010. But the most important effect of Tuesday’s elections is historical. It demolishes the great realignment myth of 2008.

In the aftermath of last year’s Obama sweep, we heard endlessly about its fundamental, revolutionary, transformational nature. How it was ushering in an FDR-like realignment for the 21st century in which new demographics — most prominently, rising minorities and the young — would bury the GOP far into the future. One book proclaimed “The Death of Conservatism,” while the more modest merely predicted the terminal decline of the Republican Party into a regional party of the Deep South or a rump party of marginalized angry white men.

This was all ridiculous from the beginning. The ‘08 election was a historical anomaly. A uniquely charismatic candidate was running at a time of deep war weariness, with an intensely unpopular Republican president, against a politically incompetent opponent, amid the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression. And still he won by only seven points.

Exactly a year later comes the empirical validation of that skepticism. Virginia — presumed harbinger of the new realignment, having gone Democratic in ‘08 for the first time in 44 years — went red again. With a vengeance. Barack Obama had carried it by six points. The Republican gubernatorial candidate won by 17 — a 23-point swing. New Jersey went from plus-15 Democratic in 2008 to minus-four in 2009. A 19-point swing.

~~~

November ‘08 was one shot, one time, never to be replicated. Nor was November ‘09 a realignment. It was a return to the norm — and definitive confirmation that 2008 was one of the great flukes in American political history.

The irony of 2009 is that the anti-Democratic tide overshot the norm — deeply blue New Jersey, for example, elected a Republican governor for the first time in 12 years — because Democrats so thoroughly misread 2008 and the mandate they assumed it bestowed. Obama saw himself as anointed by a watershed victory to remake American life. Not letting the cup pass from his lips, he declared to Congress only five weeks after his swearing-in his “New Foundation” for America — from remaking the one-sixth of the American economy that is health care to massive government regulation of the economic lifeblood that is energy.

~~~

…Just last month Gallup found that conservatives outnumber liberals by 2 to 1 (40 percent to 20 percent) and even outnumber moderates (at 36 percent). So on Tuesday, the “rump” rebelled.

First off, I moved to the DC area in 1999, the same year that Dan Snyder bought the Washington Redskins. Interestingly enough, the job that brought me here was working for Snyder’s old company, Snyder Communications. Also, I never met the man during my time working there, and from the stories I’ve heard about him that’s not a complaint.

For those of you unfamiliar, Snyder immediately became a big news item from the beginning. He was brash, energetic, and has had no problems making bold moves as owner. Whether it was interrupting summer camp by arriving in his helicopter during practices, expanding Fedex Field’s seating while raising ticket prices, and charging admission to summer camp for one season. Also, despite having no background in football, he became heavily involved in the team. Snyder held post-game meetings with his head coaches, brought in a big name personnel man from the 49ers Super Bowl Dynasty (Vinny Cerrato), has chased down and overpaid big name coaches, and has even micro managed to the point of firing several kickers over the course of a season for blown kicks.

And what has Snyder accomplished as owner? From a financial perspective, he’s done quite well. He’s made the Redskins the second most valuable team in football. But outside of financials, the team has been a disaster. That’s not quite accurate – it’s been a picture of consistent mediocrity, never great, and until this season, never truly bad. Cerrato never proved to be the great personnel man he was hoped to be. Along with Snyder, he helped to bring in overpriced and overrated or over the hill players like Deion Sanders, Bruce Smith, Brandon Lloyd, and most recently, Albert Haynesworth. Snyder has also gone through a carousel of head coaches, and given his heavy handedness over operations, no competent Head Coach wants to lead the Redskins. This has come to a head this season with the team being led by a man who has no business being a Head Coach in Jim Zorn. As of the writing of this article the Redskins are 2-5, and the fans are in open revolt.

Snyder has always been prickly about criticism. Early on, while most of the local media could not stop fawning over him, one local paper, The Washington Times, wasn’t playing ball. They wrote critical pieces on Snyder, and as a result their reporter was banished to covering the games via a TV set below Fedex Field. As things have gotten worse, Snyder has even taken to censoring fans coming to the games. Now, the man who was once hailed as a bright, fresh face has been exposed as a vain, petty individual who has taken on a job for which he had no qualifications.

Which brings us to President Obama. Everyone knows about his meteoric rise since impressing America at the 2004 Democratic Convention with his amazing ability to read aloud. And in 2008, despite having no real accomplishments nor ever having won an election without relying on underhanded tactics, we elected him as our 44th president.

I don’t need to go into every detail over the train wreck that the Obama presidency has been so far, but to quickly review a few major points:

• Building on the irresponsible spending of the Bush administration that will send our federal budget deficit into the trillions
• Backing a health care bill that will succeed in both ruining the quality of health care while sending costs skyrocketing
• Becoming a laughingstock in his foreign policy to the point where even the Prime Minister of France basically called him a naive twit
• Reread that last one. I never thought I’d see that in my lifetime
• Running historically discredited fiscal policy that will soon send unemployment into the double digit range as America endured under FDR

Obviously there is a lot more, but those are the main points for now. And like Snyder, Obama has had some successes so far. Ironically, both are for things that the people who voted for him were not looking for. First off, Obama has baldly broken his promise to not take national security seriously. Obama is already backing off of an immediate, unconditional surrender in Iraq. If you disagree with this last statement look at it from another angle. If Bin Laden issued a decree for all Al-Queda fighters to leave Iraq by next year how would that be interpreted? Now that Obama is postponing the end of tracking and prosecuting terrorists, he is working to make it up to his base by vacillating on Afghanistan.

The only other major accomplishment of the Obama administration sprang from the law of unintended consequences. Having become so used to the fawning coverage of the press and his own self absorption, it probably never entered Obama’s mind that he could ever face real public opposition to his policies. However, he made the mistake of misinterpreting his lofty “post-partisanship” ideal to mean “shut up and follow my radical left wing agenda”. The Republican party may have been left for dead on the sidelines, but the American people weren’t.

They came out in droves to for the team party protests, and to confront the elected officials at the town hall meetings. And Obama and the media had no idea how to deal with it. With no figurehead to apply the Alinsky demonization tactic, the liberals showed their true contempt for the average American citizen. The left dubbed them “angry mobs”, “unruly” and “astroturfers”, while whining about the level of discourse as they conveniently forgot their own behavior for the last eight years. And of course, the arrogant journalists who condescendingly decry Fox News for its bias (and yes, I know they’re biased.At least they’re honest about their perspective) are oblivious to their own unprofessionalism when they gleefully label the protesters “Tea Baggers”.

To top everything else off, The White House has declared war on Fox News for the crime of being the only major TV news outlet that does not diligently promote the administration’s talking points. This goes hand in hand with Obama attacking Rush Limbaugh earlier this year. The administration probably thought it would help discredit a perceived enemy, when all that it accomplished was giving the opposition some cheap publicity while making themselves look like shallow crybabies. We’ve even gotten to the point where the Attorney General is trying to pressure a DC official to pull an ad critical of Obama’s anti-school choice position.

So here we are today, with two leaders in Washington who came in ready to change the world. Instead, their arrogance and inability to adapt when reality did not meet their rosy visions have left both reeling and looking like two men struggling to do jobs they were never even remotely qualified to take on.

As an Eagles fan I’ve been thoroughly enjoying watching Snyder so ineptly run his franchise. As an American, President Obama’s performance has just been painful to watch.

As Chris Griffin would say, “I need an adult! I need an adult!”

Crossposted from Brother Bobs Blog

The crowd went crazy and the world rejoiced. Finally, the United States was ready to join the community of man.

In what former U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton calls our first post-American President, Obama has bestowed instant cachet on the growing ranks of Americans who revel in the thought of being the first in their own social set to be considered cutting edge ‘citizens of the world.’ Especially since joining this community of global citizens confers upon them automatic (albeit, unearned) virtue, along with instant and unassailable moral stature.

For those of you who just aren’t with it, (like Christians, conservatives and a few Republicans) here are the latest, up to the minute, details on how to gain inclusion in this trendy and politically correct group.

To become a ‘citizen of the world,’ you must first and foremost declare your support for the disenfranchised. Preferably in front of a camera in a very public forum. Just pick a group of victims upon whom you will bestow your empathy and support. The only caveat being that they reside in underdeveloped countries ruled by misunderstood men of good will like Uganda, or Cuba, or Somalia, or…well, you get my drift. Oh, and make sure everyone understands that these victims are only victims because of George W. Bush and/or America.

Next, you must ardently advocate the spending of other people’s money in order to help these poor victims. If you’re one of the fortunate ‘non-rich,’ (meaning your income is under $250,000 and/or you receive a government check every month)  then a straight party line vote for the Democrats, frequent letters to the editor and a catchy bumper sticker are strongly recommended.

In addition, you must make yourself available for the occasional photo-op or rally, and vocalize your support for all of Obama’s policies to every-one you know. (T-shirts are a very cool way to do this.)

If you’re unfortunate enough and greedy enough to have an annual income over $250,000, your membership entrance requirements are a bit more stringent. The good news is, you can skip right over victims and concentrate on vital issues like global warming or the evils of capitalism.

For all you rich guys out there, its recommended that you use whatever influence you have to advocate for whichever policy Obama is currently trying to foist on the American public. Bumper stickers won’t do it, guys. You need to atone big time.

Not to worry, just contact DNC.org… and they will give you a list of organizations you should  support. And since you’ve made all that money on the backs of the poor, social justice requires that you give back some of your own money, instead of merely advocating the expenditure of other people’s money.

A list of approved recipient groups will be provided free of charge. It is recommended that you give early and often. ACORN is the most needy cause as of this writing. But whatever group you decide to donate your bucks to, rest assured, Obama is in the process of making those donations tax deductible.

If you happen to be filthy rich and/or an elected official, different rules apply. In order to be considered a citizen of the world, all you have to do is believe (faking belief  is totally OK) in Obama’s vision of utopia. You must believe, or at least profess to believe, that world peace is possible, that the earth is melting, that diplomacy trumps war and that America is the cause of all the world’s problems. Other that that, the only real requirement is a constant and sustained effort to ensure that global governance trumps American sovereignty.

Hat-tip: it wouldn’t hurt if you make known that yours was one of the Swiss bank accounts the Obama administration recently forced the Swiss to disclose. That alone will ensure you are recognized by the right people.

There you have it, fellow comrades. If you have followed the above steps, we want to officially welcome you as a new ‘citizen of the world.’ Take a load off. You are now eligible to engage in global groupthink, which means that you will never again be forced to make any moral, financial or life decisions on your own. More membership perks are already in the works, and you guys will be the first to benefit! Kumbaya

Crossposted from Right Bias

Another celebrity romance falls to pieces:

By Guy Adams

Wednesday, 28 October 2009

He’s crossed swords, over the years, with all the usual right-wing suspects, from car-makers to gun owners to Wall Street executives, health companies, and George W Bush. Now Michael Moore has picked a fight with a hero of the international left.

The documentary-maker has caused outrage among Hugo Chavez’s supporters by using a late-night chat show to tell a humorous anecdote about meeting Venezuela’s socialist President in a luxury hotel suite during the recent Venice Film Festival.

His two-minute yarn, told to ABC host Jimmy Kimmel earlier this month, seemed harmless enough. Moore alleged that he and his wife had been woken at 2am by a racket coming from Mr Chavez’s room and ventured upstairs to ask him to quieten down.

“A bottle and a half of tequila later,” Moore claimed, he had helped the President to write the speech he recently delivered to the UN. “At the very least, the guy owes me a year’s worth of free gasoline!” he joked.

But there was a problem with the story. A big one. The meeting that Moore so confidently described never happened. And tequila certainly wasn’t consumed: Mr Chavez is teetotal.

The duo did meet in Venice, but only in the daytime. Moore, in town to launch his new film, Capitalism, sat with Mr Chavez, who was there to promote Oliver Stone’s documentary South of the Border, for three hours. The US press were excluded from the meeting.

Supporters of Mr Chavez now suspect that Moore fabricated his anecdote to gloss over the chummy nature of that encounter. They have taken to the airwaves in a Monty Python-style PR offensive, to accuse Moore of betraying a supposed comrade.

“Michael Moore is a most unfortunate coward,” declared blogger Eva Golinger. She dubbed him “the worst of yellow journalists, a liar and storyteller on the big screen”, and said his yarn was “offensive and insulting” and a clear sign of his “hypocrisy and lack of ethics”. Franz JT Lee, a Marxist academic and blogger, claimed that the film-maker’s comments were “part of the United States’ ‘war of ideas’” against Venezuela, and said similar “propaganda” led to the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Germany.

They didn’t just spark outrage on the left, though. Critics of Mr Chavez have called the level of invective against Moore – some of which was aired on Venezuelan state television – disproportionate. They believe his anecdote was intended to be a harmless, tongue-in-cheek joke. The socialist movement failed to grasp the nuances of his intended irony, they claim, because they lack a sense of humour.

Quite what the affair says about the integrity of Moore and his documentaries remains to be seen. The film-maker has declined to comment or apologise for misleading TV viewers, save for a brief message posted on his Twitter feed on Monday: “For the record, the President of Venezuela doesn’t drink.”

To go along with this break up, Moore’s office responded to Guy Adams’ article. Below is the following exchange of emails, according to Mr. Adams (to be updated, I’m sure):

Less than hour after that article had appeared on our internet site, I got an email from Mr Moore’s office. It is printed below (with email addresses and phone numbers redacted). My reply to that email is also carried in full.

“Hamdan, Basel” *****@michaelmoore.com 28/10/2009 00:49
To: “g.adams@independent.co.uk”
cc: “Weinrib, Eric”
Subject: Michael Moore

Hi Guy,

I’m Basel Hamdan, a producer in Michael Moore’s office. There is something inaccurate in the below piece:

The long meeting did, in fact, occur extremely late in the evening. I’m not sure who told you otherwise (daytime), but they are wrong. I was present, as was my colleague Eric Weinrib (cc’d).

Could you please correct the piece, if not retract it, as you use the time of day to question the veracity of the story. Please get back to me soon – we don’t want this falsehood to spread…

Thanks,
Basel Hamdan

———————
Basel Hamdan
Dog Eat Dog Films
Producer
231-922-**** X240

Guy Adams/Editorial/Independent News and Media 28/10/2009 02:02
To: “Hamdan, Basel”
cc: “Weinrib, Eric”
Subject: Re: Michael Moore

Hi Basel

It feels a little rich to be castigated for a very minor inaccuracy, given the extent of the whopper that Mr Moore has apparently told!

I will, however, happily clarify that element of the piece – on one condition.

In the interest of giving our readers a full and accurate picture of what actually went on, I would like either Mr Moore, or someone in his office, to offer an on-the-record explanation as to why he went on the Jimmy Kimmel show and claimed to have both drunk tequila with Mr Chavez and written a significant portion of his speech to the UN.

Provided you’re able to do this (and it would surely represent staggering hypocrisy if you were not) then I will of course make the correction you desire.

Yours
Guy

Guy Adams
Los Angeles Correspondent
The Independent

+1 310 396 ****

So, what happened? Well it may not surprise you to hear that I am still waiting for Mr Moore to agree to my request.

He is, we must therefore assume, happy to broadcast what appear to be substantive lies about someone, without ever explaining, apologizing or issuing proper clarification.

However journalists who write about him are expected to immediately correct any slight – and, I might add, alleged – inaccuracy in their piece, however minor. They are even invited to retract the entire article.

Mr Moore expects, therefore, to apply one rule for himself, and another for everyone else. This is surely the essence of hypocrisy. I can’t speak for what this tells us about his journalistic technique, or the reliability of his very moving documentaries. But (at risk of sounding like a tosser) I fear that it speaks volumes about his sense of entitlement.

UPDATE – Wednesday, 2pm GMT

Mr Moore’s office have emailed with what journalists among you will recognise as the “Alastair Campbell” response…

“Hamdan, Basel” *****@michaelmoor
Subject RE: Michael Moore

You are clearly not a journalist, so we will take the matter up with your editors.

Oh, that is just sooo rich!

“We’re trying to do too much at once,” Lieberman said. “To put this government-created insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble for the taxpayers, for the premium payers and for the national debt. I don’t think we need it now.”…

Lieberman did say he’s “strongly inclined” to vote to proceed to the debate, but that he’ll ultimately vote to block a floor vote on the bill if it isn’t changed first…

“I can’t see a way in which I could vote for cloture on any bill that contained a creation of a government-operated-run insurance company,” Lieberman added. “It’s just asking for trouble – in the end, the taxpayers are going to pay and probably all people will have health insurance are going to see their premiums go up because there’s going to be cost shifting as there has been for Medicare and Medicaid.”

Since that statement came out earlier today the Reid camp…or cheerleaders….have tried to spin it so it doesn’t sound as bad as it really is. I mean how can it be bad if Joe will vote to open floor debate on Reid’s bill? Of course they are leaving out the other vote…the one that closes debate and moves the bill to a vote. Joe says he will NOT vote for that if the public option is there.

Good for him.

RINO Snowe says she won’t vote for the public option either….at least today she is saying it:

Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe says she would vote with fellow Republicans to block the Democratic health care overhaul if changes are not made to the version Majority Leader Harry Reid outlined this week.

Karl at Hot Air thinks all this is leading to is Reid being able to say “I tried…but the evil empire struck me down” to his leftist loons.

Reid apparently does not have 60 votes lined up for the public option, though Reid thinks he will have them after the CBO scores it. This move was supposedly forced by the hardcore liberals in the Senate, though this could still be the kabuki by which Reid sheds responsibility for a later failure to include the public option. Either way, the ball is now in the moderates’ court.

But there is more trouble looming for Reid:

U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., said Tuesday she still can’t support a government-funded insurance option, a day after legislation was unveiled that would give states the choice of whether to participate in the program.

“Creating another government-funded option is not where we’re going. We don’t need to go there,” Lincoln told members of the Arkansas Farm Bureau during a video conference. “A government-funded option is something that I think is not the way to go.”

And Robert Laszewski at Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review doesn’t see 60 votes coming anytime soon and does a good job of describing why:

Reid is reportedly going to include a robust Medicare-like public option with a state opt-out. That means there would be a federal Medicare-like public plan but that a state could opt out. Opting out would mean that both houses of a state’s legislature and its governor would have to agree to opt out. That’s a pretty high hurdle and it is not going to appease the moderate Democrats in the Senate, or any Republicans including Snowe, who oppose a robust public option.

We could have a public option only if a “trigger” occurs. That is Senator Snowe’s general idea. OK, define that trigger. Do you think for one moment a liberal’s definition of a trigger will come close to a moderate’s definition of a trigger? It is the last week in October and we’ve been hearing about a trigger for months. Have you seen a definition of it yet?

Then there is the possible course in the House—a public option that has to negotiate with providers just like a private health plan does—“arms’ length negotiations.” For liberals, how is that different than a co-op and its inability to gain any real kind of traction? For moderate Democrats, it will likely be seen as the “wolf in sheep’s clothes.” Maybe a place to compromise but hardly the robust government plan its proponents are looking for and there is no evidence that this idea will attract those moderate Senate Democrats that don’t like the public option.

Then there is the state opt-in. The idea is that both the state’s legislative branches and the governor would have to agree to opt-in. This could well win moderate Democratic support because very few states would do it and it is attractive to states’ rights moderates who would like to see state experimentation. This is a possible place for compromise but hardly a robust public option.

As I have said many times before, there will not be a robust Medicare-like public option or any form of a thinly veiled Medicare-like public option.

And the GOP has found some a backbone:

But before that issue can be joined on the Senate floor, Reid’s first challenge is to gain 60 votes — the number needed to overcome a filibuster by Republicans — just to bring the bill up, a parliamentary maneuver so routine that a vote is rarely required.

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, announced that in this case, members of his party will treat it as though it were “a vote on the merits” of a bill he said would “cut Medicare, raise taxes and increase health insurance premiums.” He suggested Democrats could expect campaign commercials next year on the basis of the vote, and recalled that Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was ridiculed in his 2004 presidential campaign for having once said he voted for a bill before he voted against it.

For those leftist Democrats the threat means nothing because they were elected in strong leftist strongholds….but the moderates? I think this threat will be taken seriously and some idiot trying to change the name of “public option” won’t help one iota.

All in all, its good news today.

Yet the reason they have an aversion to such “labels”, no matter how descriptively accurate, is because in order to sell any of their bill of goods to the American public, they have to engage in deception. Can you say “stealth socialism”?

“Public option” is now politically damaged goods; so let’s give it a makeover, says Nancy Pelosi, even though poop by any other name still smells like poop:

A government-sponsored “public option” for health care lives, though it may be more attractive to skeptics if it goes by a different moniker, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday.

In an appearance at a Florida senior center, the Democratic leader referred to the so-called public option as “the consumer option.” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., appeared by Pelosi’s side and used the term “competitive option.”

Both suggested new terminology might get them past any lingering doubts among the public—or consumers or competitors.

“You’ll hear everyone say, ‘There’s got to be a better name for this,’” Pelosi said. “When people think of the public option, public is being misrepresented, that this is being paid for with their public dollars.”

?…..?……?!

Ah yes, the lure of the free lunch.

The speaker said the “competitive option” idea emerged during her closed-door roundtable at the Sunrise Senior Center with advocates of seniors and others who work with older populations. Wasserman Schultz suggested the term might be here to stay.

“I think she’s going to go up and test-drive it when she goes back to Washington,” Wasserman Schultz said. “It might stick.”

As for having the votes to pass such a measure, both women said a public option would survive. They wouldn’t get into numbers of congressional supporters, but said it was simply a matter of picking which type of public option to pursue.

The nation’s medical costs will keep spiraling upward even faster than they are now under Democratic legislation pending in the House, a report from government economic experts concluded Wednesday.

Republicans said the report is a warning sign that health care legislation is likely to fall short of President Barack Obama’s goal of “bending the cost curve” by slowing torrid rates of medical inflation.

~~~

Unlike previous estimates that have focused mainly on the legislation’s impact on the federal deficit, the actuaries’ report looked at total costs, public and private, over the next 10 years. It found that the nation’s health care tab would increase somewhat more rapidly with the legislation than if nothing is done. The main reason: Newly insured people will seek medical care.

The nation’s health care tab, now at about $2.5 trillion annually, is projected to approach $4.7 trillion in 2019 without the legislation.

With the legislation, national health care spending would be nearly $4.8 trillion in 2019.

Health care would account for 21.3 percent of the U.S. economy in 2019, slightly more than an estimated share of 20.8 percent of the economy if no bill passes. Economists have warned such increases are unsustainable.

“With the exception of the proposed reductions in Medicare … (the legislation) would not have a significant impact on future health care cost growth rates,” the report said. Moreover, it’s “doubtful” that proposed Medicare cuts will stay in place, the analysts concluded.

~~~

It also cautioned that tens of millions of newly insured people could put a strain on the health care system.

“The additional demand for health services could be difficult to meet initially with existing health provider resources and could lead to price increases, cost-shifting and/or changes in providers’ willingness to treat patients with low-reimbursement health coverage,” the analysts concluded.

We all knew this to be the true months ago…well, those with common sense understood this. This study is just one more that shows the exact same thing, that ObamaCare will in no way reduce the amount of money spent on health care and in fact will worsen the system, worsen the health care product, worsen the service, and worsen our economy.

The public understands this now so Obama and company actually break the law to get it passed:

Senate Finance ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is raising concerns that a Department of Health and Human Services Web site that urges visitors to send an e-mail to President Barack Obama praising his health care reform plan may violate rules against government-funded propaganda.

The Web page is accessed through a “state your support” button featured prominently on the HHS Web site and carries a disclaimer that the Web site is maintained by HHS.

In a letter sent to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Tuesday, Grassley warned that “any possible misuse of appropriated funds by the executive branch to engage in publicity or propaganda in support of an Administration priority is a matter that must be investigated and taken seriously,” noting that in 2005 Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) argued that “the use of official funds for similar activities were ‘underhanded tactics’ and that these tactics ‘are not worthy of our great democracy.’”

It’s propaganda plain and simple.

But now Pelosi and the left think nothing of it.

The Obama administration really needs to get over itself.

First, the president and his aides go to war with Fox News because the network maintains a generally anti-Obama slant.

Then, an anonymous administration aide attacks bloggers for failing to maintain a sufficiently pro-Obama slant.

These are not disconnected developments.

An administration that won the White House with an almost always on-message campaign and generally friendly coverage from old and new media is now frustrated by its inability to control the debate and get the coverage it wants.

They should listen.

But noooooo. The Mao lover, and Obama aide, gives a rundown on the administrations modus operendi:

President Obama’s presidential campaign focused on “making” the news media cover certain issues while rarely communicating anything to the press unless it was “controlled,” White House Communications Director Anita Dunn disclosed to the Dominican government at a videotaped conference.

“Very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn’t absolutely control,” said Dunn.

“One of the reasons we did so many of the David Plouffe videos was not just for our supporters, but also because it was a way for us to get our message out without having to actually talk to reporters,” said Dunn, referring to Plouffe, who was Obama’s chief campaign manager.

“We just put that out there and made them write what Plouffe had said as opposed to Plouffe doing an interview with a reporter. So it was very much we controlled it as opposed to the press controlled it,” Dunn said.

And when they find out they can’t control the media….they send out the hounds, like liberal writer and author of such books as The Bush Tragedy, Jacob Weisberg, here in which he describes how “unAmerican” Fox news is:

..He is also accusing Fox of forcing MSNBC and CNN to swing to the left instead of maintaining their world-renowned objectivity in news reporting. (Yes indeed, that was sarcasm.) (Via Hot Air.)

Consider Fox’s Web story on the episode. It quotes five people. Two of them work for Fox. All of them assert that administration officials are either wrong in substance or politically foolish to criticize the network. No one is cited supporting Dunn’s criticisms or saying that it could make sense for Obama to challenge the network’s power. It’s a textbook example of a biased journalism.

Meanwhile, ABC presented what was essentially an infomercial on Obamacare earlier this year. A CNN reporter went off on the people she was supposed to be objectively interviewing, and ultimately lost her job—probably because she’s not supposed to be so overt in her liberal bias. But that’s objective journalism. (Say, did ABC present the other side of the healthcare debate in its informercial? I’m thinking not.)

The funniest part of the whole article from Weisberg is the point in which he says Fox has forced the otherwise “objective” news stations like….cough MSNBC cough….to tilt to the left because of Fox’s bias.

Are they high? These stations we’re anything BUT non-biased during the Bush years and now that Obama is in office their love fest can’t be contained. But it’s all because of the all powerful, all mighty, Fox news that they became that way. Fox forced them to call the station worse then Al-Qaeda? Fox forced them to call President Bush fascist?

Puhlease.

Most Americans recognize the majority of the media is liberal, and that’s not a good thing. There is a reason why Fox is kicking all their asses.

And President Obama’s brilliant new strategy?

Freeze Fox out.

Complete idiocy.

If we compare the men as authors, Obama has suffered the ignominy of having claimed to have written an autobiography that was written by another man. Marx is the most well read author in all of history, if we assume that the bible was written be multiple authors. Mohammed is a distant second, the followers of Marx far outnumber the followers of the Prophet.

Marx would surely be unimpressed, if not with the writing skills of Obama, at least with the output.

Marx, was described as a genius, prophet, and economic theorist, “first of all a very learned man,” by Joseph Schumpeter a well known (Austrian) Harvard economist, iconoclast and devout conservative. Despite outspoken pundit claims, we have yet to observe traces of Obama’s genius.

Marx wrote for the New York Tribune, their best paid correspondent. He also wrote for the Tribune and the Herald, the antecedents of the Herald Tribune, an organ of staunch Conservatism for generations.

Obama was the editor for the Harvard Law Review and wrote…nothing.

Both men attended University and distinguished themselves at being undistinguished. Marx specialized in drinking and dueling, Obama seems to have been preoccupied with cocaine and the bong. Marx, we know neglected his studies; Obama, since he has sealed his records, we can only assume he did poorly. Brilliant men don’t hide their accomplishments.

Both men used spirituality to their own detriment. Marx was a Jew, baptized a protestant, and was a practicing atheist. His writings indicate an anti-Semitism, as well as a revulsion for all religion. Marx stated that religion was the opiate of the masses, that religion only taught people to acquiesce through hardship and exploitation, when they should rise up in revolt.

Obama has been at the very least influenced by the Muslim religion of his father and stated, at least indirectly, in his book, that when an ill-wind blows he will always stand with the Muslim. He also spent twenty years in a Black Liberation Church listening to the racist rants of a bigoted preacher, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Obama now shuns church and plays basketball instead.

At this point we reach a common ground, not that Marx was in to basketball, but he would have at least approved of the non-spiritual nature of Obama’s presidency.

Marx built his ideas of economics on the writings of Robert Malthus, Adam Smith, and David Ricardo; the fathers of economic theory. Obama based his economic theory on Davis and Alynsky. The comparison is laughable, but accurate. Marx would have been apoplectic with the writings of Obama’s mentors.

Marx’s Communist Manifesto was written with the help of his friend Engels. Originally, it was an organizing document for The League Of The Just, that became the Communist League. It is the most successful propaganda literature of all time. Marx’s writing took a quantum leap forward from being wordy and pretentious to being a series of hammer blows upon the anvil of human psyche. A style of delivery and speech writing that is still emulated by most politicians today.

From the Manifesto:

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now open, now hidden fight, a fight tat each time ended either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”

“The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie…”

I can’t help but wonder if Marx would identify Soros, the large banks, and Wall Street as the new bourgeoisie of the Obama Executive. I think that Karl would be extremely unimpressed with the antics of this carbon copy Marxism.

Marx did not call for the death of capitalism, indeed he praised capitalism, he described a great and practical conflict that would tend to bring forth a series of reforms. Such as:

Ending of private ownership of land
Progressive income tax
Abolition of inheritance
A national bank with a monopoly of banking operations
Public ownership of railroads and communication
Extension of public ownership in industry; cultivation of idle lands
Better soil management
Work by all
Combination of agriculture and industry; decentralization of population
Free education
Abolition of child labor
Education along with work

These reforms have appeared in industrialized countries and blunted the need for Marx’s “forced overthrow of existing social conditions.

Marx published the first volume of Das Kapital, in German, in 1867, after years of study in the reading room of the British Museum with Friedrich Engels at his side. Marx died on March 13, 1883, with Engels at his side. Engels then compiled all the notes and manuscripts and published two more volumes. Marx always insisted on a scholarly approach to all his writing, all related material had to be read and analyzed before he committed to print. Obama shares this same dedication and commitment to work.

Obama seems partially aware of the popular rhetorical ideas of revolution and is intent on rebuilding the most perfect society with a minimal understanding of Marx’s idea of societal revolution. Revolutions are easy to enunciate, but difficult to carry through. Three conditions are essential for a successful revolution.

You must have determined leaders. Men who are willing to gamble everything including their lives for an idea. Men who can inspire others to follow them, straight to the gates of Hell.

There must be dedicated followers, people who will follow orders without question. Often complicated by revolutionaries, who often have their own ideas of how things should be run, no matter where they are in rank.

The other side must be morally and militarily weak, otherwise there is a bloodbath.

Obama’s Revolution is destined to fail, it falls short on all three requirements for a successful revolution.

The effort of Obama to erode the nationalism and integrity of the United States would have probably been met with approval by Marx. Marx believed that proletarians should consider themselves workers first and foremost and above nationalism.

These few words, “inscribe on its banners: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” are surely the most often recited among college students and revolutionaries of all time. This one phrase has probably recruited more people to Communism, than the hundreds of thousands in the three volumes of Das Kapitol and the Communist Manifesto; but they pale in comparison to Obama’s reference to wee weed men.

Marx has been dead for over 120 years, Obama is a fairly young man. Marx has inspired more people than the Prophet Mohammed and still his popularity catches people‘s imagination. Initially, Obama inspired many people, but like a candle running out of wax his inspiration is fading.

Like a moth that eventually flies into the flame, I think Obama’s prominence will be short; thank goodness, he didn’t have that charisma along with the intelligence and dedication of Marx.